Queens does its living in brick — attached rows sharing party walls, semis with their twin stacks, prewar co-ops, frame houses with one proud chimney. Each kind fails its own way, and we've worked on all of them from a shop in Maspeth, one of the oldest corners of the borough. Straight prices, our own crew, and one of us on the phone weekdays from seven to seven.
Everything below is done by the people whose name is on the truck — no brokered leads, no strangers subbed in, no finger-pointing when something needs standing behind.
Rods and brushes matched to the flue, worked until the liner shows clean top to bottom, with the damper, shelf and throat detailed by hand before the gear goes back on the truck.
The whole system walked the way a good super walks his building — unhurried, top to bottom, nothing glossed. The camera goes up the flue whenever a contract or a question mark calls for footage.
The stretch above the roof takes the borough's worst weather and fails first. We take the tired section down to solid brick — and only that far — then relay it plumb, cap it with a full crown, and tie the flashing back in right.
On an attached block every house shows its neighbors' repairs, so ours are made to vanish: old joints cut to a clean seat, mortar mixed to the row's color and softness, struck so your house doesn't wear a patchwork face.
City flues collect city tenants — pigeons, squirrels, wind-blown grit off the avenue. A stainless cap with tight screening, sized to the flue and seated square on the stack, evicts all of them permanently.
On flat-roof blocks water enters high and surfaces low, rooms away. We start where the water starts — coping, crown, flashing seam, tar line — prove the entry, and close it. Then the ceiling gets to heal instead of reopening.
Party-wall stacks and old clay tile weren't drawn up for today's appliances. A continuous stainless liner gives your flue its own sealed run inside the old masonry — yours alone, whatever the wall arrangement next door.
Plenty of prewar fireplaces got bricked over, painted shut or just quietly retired. We bring them back the right way: firebox rebuilt in refractory brick, smoke chamber dressed, damper renewed, and the first fire tested before we leave.
A chimney never quits cold — it posts its notices first, same as everything else on the block. Read them early and the fix costs lunch money instead of vacation money.
Same route every job, no detours: call it in, get the once-over, see the numbers, get it done.
Weekdays 7 to 7, one of ours answers. Say what the chimney's doing and grab a slot that works for your week.
Base to parapet at zero charge, wrapped up with straight talk at the door — no scare stories, no upsell.
Line-item pricing with urgent flagged first and cosmetic last. You approve a number; that same number is on the bill.
The work finished to trade standard, the site left cleaner than found, the guarantee in writing.
When the first real freeze crosses the East River, the chimneys that got their once-over this fall just work. Get on the list before the rush — the call takes five minutes and the looking costs zip.
(929) 544-8247A run of recent jobs — flues brushed, crowns poured, caps seated and joints matched from Maspeth out to the ends of the borough.
The shop sits on 57th St off the Maspeth industrial strip; the trucks work the whole borough, both sides of the LIE.
Don't see your corner? Call (929) 544-8247 — if it's in the borough, we're there.
No catch — zip means zip. The once-over takes in the firebox — damper, throat and all — the flue for its entire run, and everything up top: crown, cap, flashing, the parapet line where the row meets the sky. It ends with straight talk at your door — what's sound, what's tired, what can wait a season. No truck fee, no diagnostic charge, no envelope later. Exactly one thing here has a price tag: the written report, the once-over's findings typed with photos for $149, and nobody types it up unless you ask.
We'll be straight with you, because that's cheaper than a slogan: the crews take weekends. This number is answered live by one of our own Monday through Friday, seven a.m. to seven p.m. Nights and weekends, the machine takes it down, and Monday's callbacks start when the line opens. Two things to keep alongside that: smoke or flame anywhere outside the firebox, or even a maybe on carbon monoxide, is an outside-and-911 situation before anything else — we are the second call, always. And a chimney that gets its once-over each fall almost never picks a Sunday to quit.
Welcome to Queens rowhouse life: one stack, two roofs, and a fence-line question nobody settled in 1925. Practically, a party-wall chimney usually carries a separate flue for each house, and each owner is responsible for the flues serving their side — so yes, we can sweep, scope, line or repair your flue without your neighbor signing anything. Where the shared masonry itself needs work, crown to cap, the neat move is splitting it, and we write estimates both ways so the conversation over the fence goes easier. One more rowhouse special: if you smell your neighbor's fire in your living room, a flue wall between the two runs has opened, and that gets checked now, not next season.
Because on a flat-roof house the water takes the scenic route. Rain gets in at the chimney's shoulder, the parapet coping or a split in the roofing where it meets the stack, then rides the inside of the masonry and the joists sideways until it finds a ceiling it likes — often two floors and half a house from the entry point. That's why we hunt from the top down: coping stones, crown, flashing seam, tar line, in that order, before anyone talks about opening a ceiling. Find the entry, fix the entry, and the ceiling stain retires on its own.
Burn a winter, sweep once — that covers most of the borough. If the fireplace worked all season, it gets cleaned when the season winds down or before the next one opens; if it sat cold since March, it gets looked at before anything is lit, because open flues collect tenants — nests, leaves, the odd pigeon — who never pay rent. Boiler and furnace flues are their own annual line: their deposits are acid rather than soot, they show nothing from the basement, and they're always further along than assumed.
Say the word contract and you skip the line. The free once-over lands inside a few days, the flagged flue gets scoped on camera so the argument turns into footage, and the $149 written report — typed, photos attached — is in your inbox fast enough to keep a closing date honest. It's built for the people who read these things: attorneys, lenders, co-op boards. They argue less with pictures.
Our guys — on payroll, not day labor picked up for the job. Every man was checked out before his first shift and works covered by the company's liability and workers'-comp policies the whole time he's on your property. Want the paper? Ask for it when you schedule, and the certificate lands ahead of the crew. Around here a handshake is nice, but the paperwork is what lets you sleep.
Not even for an afternoon. The path from the door gets covered, the fireplace opening gets sealed before a rod moves, and a filtered vacuum runs the entire job, pulling the soot the moment the brushes knock it loose. Most sweepings wrap in under an hour, the soot rides out inside the vacuum, and all that says we visited is a clean flue and a receipt on the counter.
No forms, no phone tree. The person who picks up can size the job from your description, quote a fair range, and put you on the schedule before you hang up.
The smell after Friday's fire, the chips by the curb, the co-op board's deadline — say it once, plainly. By the end of that call you'll have a yes or no on the visit, a day on the calendar, and the fair range.
(929) 544-8247 Tap to Call the ShopLive weekdays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
After hours, the machine holds your spot